Amendments to the Romanian Constitution

After a long break, Social-Democrat leader Prime Minister Victor Ponta and National Liberal Party leader Crin Antonescu appeared together in public to present the Social Liberal Union’s action plan for 2014. The Union has ambitious plans this year, eyeing the amendment to the Constitution by late May, introducing institutional reforms and adopting certain outstanding laws, such as the Mining Law or the Laws on Public-Private Partnerships and Land Acquisition.

Ştefan Stoica, 14.01.2014, 12:52

The most controversial project of the Social Liberal Union remains the joint holding of European legislative elections and the referendum on the amendment to the Constitution in late May. The referendum is due to be held in two days, in order to have better odds of being validated. A referendum in Romania requires a 50% voter turnout in order to be validated. Liberal Crin Antonescu however believes there will be no confusion between the two votes:

“Our main concern regards Romanian citizens and voters. I don’t believe we are playing down the importance of European legislative elections. Quite the contrary, we are intensifying it by bringing up another topic of public interest. The two topics don’t exclude each other, and won’t create any confusion for the common voter. I believe they will make citizens more interested in casting their votes”.

The Liberal-Democrat opposition and representatives of the Hungarian minority have a different opinion. Leader of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania Kelemen Hunor:

“If a campaign for the European parliamentary elections and for the amendment to the Constitution is jointly conducted, all the topics that are important to Romanian citizens, to Romania, pertaining to the future of the European Union will be cast aside”.

In another move, the Social Liberal Union wants to reintroduce the party list-based voting system for the Chamber of Deputies and reduce the number of MPs to 300. The Liberal-Democratic Party is against any amendment to the election law. Vice-president Catalin Predoiu argues that a 400-seat Parliament would favour the Social-Democratic Party:

“70% of the seats won by the Social-Liberal Union would go to the Social-Democratic Party. On this day, Crin Antonescu has sacrificed his own party in exchange for his bid to run for president”.

Social-Liberal leaders have also decided to hold the presidential elections in early November, 45 days before the expiry of president Basescu’s current term in office.